Akāla-jalada (c. 8th–9th century) was a Sanskrit-language poet from the Tripuri Kalachuri kingdom of present-day Central India.
[1] According to a verse by Rajashekhara, quoted by the 12th century writer Jalhana, a dramatist named Kadambari-rama plagiarized from Akalajalada for a nataka (play), and gained reputation as an excellent poet.
Its English translation by A. K. Warder is as follows:[5] In which with its frogs sleeping in hollows, its tortoises as if they had died in the earth, its sheat fish, after wriggling in the broad bed of mud, had fainted again;
In that dried up lake a cloud out of season came and acted so that herds of wild elephants have plunged in up to their necks and are drinking the water.
A verse attributed to Rajashekhara in Jalhana's Sukti-muktavali suggests that Akalajalada had written many muktakas (detached stanzas).